Alexander Volkanovski vs. Max Holloway I: The Strategic Masterclass
Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
Expectations
As far as performances in the history of modern MMA are concerned, it’s difficult to think of many as impressive as Alexander Volkanovski’s 25-minute victory over pound-for-pound great and the now-former UFC Featherweight Champion, Max Holloway. The Hawaiian is often a source of constant discussion because of his many attributes and rigorous schedule, but he was inarguably one of the best fighters in the world. Even a razor-close, intensely violent loss to Dustin Poirier, one of the only few fighters with both the pocket craft and raw power to make the premier striking technician of the UFC work in his strongest areas, did not change this fact. Moreover, whether Holloway was or was not attempting to alter his process as a fighter after such a hellacious battle is, in my opinion, not necessarily provable. Behind one of the most proficient lead hands to craft among the greatest momentum-based games in the UFC, he still was one of the finest to grace the cage. If Holloway could control you or overwhelm you, he would take advantage. Furthermore, he had the durability to take what you could dish out and had the tactical mindset to adapt and find ways to get himself on the clearest path to a victory.
Alexander Volkanovski’s rise to contendership had indicated that he was, for the lack of a better term, incredibly well-rounded. He had the pressure wrestling game to overwhelm many physically, an aggressive clinch attack, and an adequate understanding of what to do and when to do it. Although his offense proved overwhelming enough to crush the likes of Darren Elkins and a past-his-best Chad Mendes, his victory over Jose Aldo would indicate that there was more than met the eye about the City Kickboxing fighter. As far as fighters who are hair-trigger on responding to threats, Aldo nears the top of the list. To deal with Aldo, Volkanovski applied a plethora of feints, lateral misdirections and kicks at a distance to keep him guessing and would push Aldo against the wall with the clinch. Though the bout would be closely-contested and Aldo was not the same fighter he used to be, Volkanovski did prove that he could effectively do his homework. The question was whether could he have a plan versus an elite fighter who could enforce a pace, build as the rounds progressed, and not past his best.
Suffice it to say, the answer was a resounding yes.
Denying Entries
The cornerstone of Max Holloway’s game begins with his jab. Said jab is incredibly versatile and among the best in MMA history. Not only does it help Holloway touch his way into pocket exchanges, Holloway will alter the frequency and power behind it to manipulate rhythm and to extend engagements. Once Holloway starts mixing in his greater shot selection, taking angles through hops as he throws, and starts targeting the body, he can overwhelm his opponents or deny them any chance to retaliate.
Therefore, as soon as the fight began, Volkanovski instantly began to handfight Holloway’s lead hand.
It’s worth noting that Volkanovski chose to handfight with both of his hands. In part, Volkanovski could afford to do so because Holloway was the one using his reach to gauge distance; moreover, handfighting with the lead hand could make it easier for Volkanovski to see and prep for counters respectively. Handfighting with the rear hand, conversely, allowed Volkanovski to not forego use of his own lead hand and to keep Holloway guessing. In other words, handfighting with both the lead and rear hands has utility to maintain control whilst still allowing the fighter to have options.
The more important aspect, however, is Volkanovski’s footwork and how every step Holloway makes is met with a lateral step of his own. These steps are done to deny Holloway his entries into the pocket, where he would have the inherent edge.
Holloway tends to use throwaway jabs to either bridge the gap or to keep touching his opponent, but he will often put weight onto his front foot to close that distance quicker. Consequently, leg kicks can not only punish the jab as a counter, but also punish the lead leg because it would force them to transfer their base and weight backwards. Please note how Volkanovski is also using the handfight and feints to draw responses out of Holloway to land more kicks.
One of Holloway’s more patented abilities is his use of shifts to create new angles on his opponent. As a result, he can pour on more volume and extend exchanges. Of course, he runs the risk of being countered should an opponent step inside and catch him square as Volkanovski does here by stepping inside. Although the shifts are potent, if your opponent knows that they are most effective depending upon the proximity and how you create your entry, well-timed counters can disincentivize them as a means of entering the pocket.
Speaking of which, the real cornerstone of Volkanovski’s strategy to deny Holloway’s offense lied within counterpunching. Even if he was able to shut down many of Holloway’s methods of entering the pocket, he still needed answers if the champion was able to create his moments.
Despite his front-foot heavy stance compromising him, Holloway would often look to counter jab or touch Volkanovski off of a kick by stepping inside. To stop Holloway and to end any potential exchanges, Volkanovski would attempt to catch shots off of a modified high guard and then counter with hooks over Holloway’s straighter punches. Alternatively, Volkanovski would bait Holloway to strike upstairs, slip or dip under as he stepped inside and then counter at closer range.
Why counter with hooks specifically? In part, a hook requires a greater transfer of weight than punching straight at the target. Likewise, as the shorter man, Volkanovski wants to draw Holloway to him – in a straight line – where hooks are ideally going to be faster and the harder punches. Moreover, the hooks also, depending upon whether the fight is an open or closed stance matchup, allow Volkanovski to close the door on longer engagements and return to a more neutral range. Because Volkanovski dips and pulls out with his upper body whilst maintaining an active guard, he prioritizes his safety and punctuating exchanges versus a more dangerous pocket threat.
Conventionally-speaking, denying entries against a taller, longer and deeper pocket threat by drawing him in does offer risks, but it is a testament to Volkanovski’s consistency with the handfight, footwork and counters that he’s able to prevent MMA’s premier momentum fighter from building at all. Furthermore, denying Holloway any sort of initiative allowed Volkanovski to solidify his hold of the fight’s course.
The Folding System
Let me ask you, the reader, a question: Why is Alexander Volkanovski a good fighter?
You may be surprised to find that coming to an answer is far harder than you would expect. Perhaps you instantly think about him in terms of well-roundedness and his ability to gameplan for opponents with nuance. Maybe you came to an answer how he embodies the rarest of the rare in MMA: a fighter who is actually self-aware and realistic about who they are, what they can do in the cage, and allocates their ancillary tools to their greatest strengths and opponent weaknesses.
To be frank, I think it is a matter of all of the above, but I feel we would need to elaborate on how this makes him good. In short, Alexander Volkanovski is a good fighter because he looks to engage fights with strategic purpose, possesses awareness of his attributes, and strives to grow as a fighter to address a specific opponent and to create a functional skillset respectively. Many of these characteristics, make no mistake, are incredibly sparse for the metagame of MMA.
You can have specialists that rely upon keeping a fight in one phase and their entire game is predicated around having it there. You often will find fighter who will rely upon their reads and intuition as a fight progresses to eventually control it or make a decisive move to finish their opponent. Even fighters who are typically well-rounded might ultimately lack the hallmarks of a cohesive game; they can do everything, but they may not know how to use it all together.
What makes Volkanovski a special fighter is best exemplified by an Aristotelian proverb: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In other words, Alexander Volkanovski is not a good fighter because he can do everything - he can engage in most phases, but he has areas of weakness. He is a good fighter because he understands how he fights and has crafted a system that uses each component together. One part alone would be inadequate, but every part used without knowledge of how they go together is just as useless. Volkanovski, however, like Georges St. Pierre – a fellow master of this class – not only can be everything, but he recognizes how to use it in synergy to have the most success in a fight.
Nowhere is that better exemplified through his use of what I will dub as his “folding system”.
When a fighter folds their hip it means that they square their body to create a motion to indicate or to make even more motion, usually forwards. What is particularly important about folding the hip though, is how it can be used as a feint to set up other offense or to actually set up offense.
Folding the hip actually is not just one feint in principle though. In reality, it can act as a few. First and most obvious is the rear hand because the rear hip is what is being turned (likewise you can quickly jab off of it). The second is that it is easily transferable to leg kicks because the weight transfer is just another step. The third is that, because the hip is already being turned, the fighter can transfer their weight quickly into a lead hook (this same application can apply for lead inside leg kicks).
And if a fighter can establish all of these tools as viable threats, then it becomes extremely difficult to predict which attack will come next while acting as a springboard for more offense.
Case in point, Holloway becomes more passive with his aggression because he is uncertain which counters or sorts of offense Volkanovski will commit to off his hip. In turn, this can allow Volkanovski to get ground back or to punish Holloway for planting.
What makes things more difficult for Holloway is that Volkanovski’s folding system allows him to build and create new opportunities for offense, especially since he’s pairing it with the aforementioned handfighting and counterpunching to nullify the former even more.
Then, Volkanovski starts bringing in his blitzes, half-steps and hops. As a shorter man, Volkanovski is faced with a disadvantage in height and reach. It becomes imperative that he avoid any kind of pocket exchanges with Holloway. Therefore, Volkanovski crafts his blitzes around dipping his head off the centerline to preempt any counters and to smother Holloway on the inside. Likewise, he would fake the blitzes with hops or folding his hip to break Holloway’s rhythm.
When Holloway switched to southpaw to try countering Volkanovski’s inside low kicks and entries with 1-2s or counter jabs, the latter needed to find an answer. It took him less than a minute, through the use of a shifting right hook.
There already exists a video that details Volkanovski’s tactics here; therefore, I’ll be brief. Primarily, Volkanovski would square his hips with a tradework blitzing dip and level change as he shifted, then would catch Holloway with a right hook. Because Holloway often can be caught on the backfoot when he hops away from a pursuing opponent, this move was a stroke of genius from the challenger. As a result, Holloway’s attempts to counter Volkanovski from an open-stance matchup were mitigated because the Hawaiian couldn’t plant his feet to get going without that being a trigger for Volkanovski to step in.
Things got more difficult for Holloway, however, because Volkanovski started faking the blitzes with and into his folding system to get more space back or to set Holloway up for followup strikes upstairs – such as the open-stance matchup killer: the lead check hook (Again, cause folding the hip makes it easy to quickly weight transfer into the lead hook). With both the folding system and use of blitzes and hops, Volkanovski could affect Holloway’s sense of rhythm with his strikes off his footwork consistently.
In totality, these tactics encompass Volkanovski’s control of space between himself and the opponent. Against an opponent with superior range attributes and a major advantage in the pocket, Volkanovski’s striking here had to have enough versatility to keep Holloway guessing. More importantly, it had to mitigate risks to prevent Holloway from taking even the slightest chance of building momentum. In other words, through his use of specific mixups and ringcraft in proximity to his opponent, Volkanovski was able to nearly shut down one of the best fighters in the world whilst giving him more options. Why that’s incredibly impressive, given the lack of effective strategic allocations in MMA, should be obvious.
It should also be noted that Volkanovski didn’t necessarily outbox Holloway. Rather, he used his mixups and reads to ensure that the fight was either never fully in boxing phases or points where it would enter those phases.
I want to also note how impressive Volkanovski’s spatial control is when he gets to press forward and mess with rhythm: Volkanovski breaks the handfight to jab and uses an overhand to press Max back. An inside leg kick punishes Holloway for planting right in front of him. When Holloway attempts to jab, Volkanovski makes an outside slip to blitz inside, which puts Holloway against the fence. Without overpursuing, Alex cuts him off, draws the handfight, jab to overhand again to keep Holloway pinned.
A Statement on the Great
With time running out, Holloway began to try to force exchanges by touching with throwaways into body work. Although this allowed him back into the fight, Volkanovski’s fearlessness and discipline was still on display.
Against a superior combination boxer, Volkanovski used specific tools off his lead hand and head movement to avoid getting countered, catch and roll with shots, or to punctuate exchanges when he could. His lead hand framing off his jab into dips or switching into a high guard for easier counterpunching allowed him to constantly fire back. Even if Volkanovski was not able to win every exchange, he could at least compete with Holloway on some terms and prevent Holloway from making more collisions.
Nonetheless, Holloway’s late surge was not just too late, it met resistance from the challenger, who was as determined to win the throne as he was disciplined against the champion’s efforts. And thus, Alexander Volkanovski was now the king of the featherweights through a brilliant strategical performance.
It may surprise some, however, that as much as I do find this showing extraordinarily impressive, it is not entirely a flawless performance. Volkanovski demonstrated his competence and ability is every phase possible. Unlike Dustin Poirier, whose victory over Holloway was barely edged out through grit and a harder puncher in the pocket, Volkanovski’s win was clear despite a competitive rally by “Blessed”. So, what is there to criticize? For one thing, the fight was still competitive.
I’ll leave a statement here for thought: Alexander Volkanovski’s victory can, in part, be attributive to Max Holloway’s poor ringcraft and inability to cut the cage off effectively. Furthermore, although Volkanovski exhibits solid cage generalship and footwork, he has a number of issues in set phases of where the fight is.
Again, Volkanovski’s game is best facilitated by his entire game working together and has to active constantly to make it work. When one part may not work, he is demonstrably less effective. Likewise, Volkanovski can be caught on the counter or in longer exchanges because he is is typically a few shots at a time and has to close distance. In layman’s terms, Volkanovski’s game is about being one step ahead and neutralizing what’s offered in process terms. Domination is the lesser outcome with Volkanovski unless he pushes for it and who he does that against is circumstantial.
This weekend, Volkanovski takes on Brian Ortega, whom offers a surprising many questions to the champion. First, Brian Ortega’s gift for counters and tactile unorthodoxy will demand more out of Volkanovski’s tactical adjustments and attentiveness than his strategic acumen. That is to say, Ortega’s intentions and process is not nearly as obvious as a Max Holloway or a Jose Aldo to prepare for despite being a lesser fighter than either. Second, Ortega stands as one of the dangerous opportunists in MMA and will ruthlessly exploit any little margin he can find. Volkanovski is a fantastic cage general and neutralizer, though he does have slight margins of error on entries and linear retreats that are cause for tension. This fight has the chance, in short, to surprise a number of people. But it will not diminish how excellent a pugilist Alexander Volkanovski has been.